At the corner of 4th Avenue West in Superior Street in downtown Duth, there's a lot of history in this block.

Welcome to In Business.

I'm Ken Ber.

Thank you for joining us.

This is the Stanley Center today.

But back in the day, Owen Ferguson hired famed Duth architect Oliver Tropagen in 1886 to build a beautiful building here and one next to it.

Mr.

Ferguson was the head of the board of trade at the time and of course a lot of his people had offices here.

Now, unfortunately, on December 30th in 1892, the buildings caught fire and burned to the ground.

They were demolished a year later in 1893.

In 1914, after sitting vacant for a while, this building was put up.

It's now the Stanley Center.

It's a mixeduse building with retail on the ground floor, offices throughout.

It's connected to the L Skywalk system.

The Stanley Center is the new version of this.

You might remember it oh say many years ago as the old Greyhound bus station.

It was also home to other businesses where Namaste is at the corner right now.

That was Adekc and Anna Astroc's business.

He had Adex menwear and it was very very popular.

There was a camera store here along the way.

And then right across from what was the broadcast center and now Maurice's was Izzy Crystal's Gourmet Market.

It was a bodega in every sense of the word.

Why?

You could walk in and there would be Izzy standing behind the counter in a suit and tie with a a white apron over it.

He knew all his customers by name and he would welcome.

You could get a hard-boiled egg.

You could get over-the-counter medications.

You could buy just about everything including the latest papers published here in Duth and from around the region.

It was truly a corner grocery store.

And at one time we had Gerskulls just up the block which was a huge supermarket.

But things changed and now for many years Duth has been a food desert when it comes to grocery stores.

Lots of great restaurants but I want to take something home and eat it.

I'm missing my bodega.

And that's what we're going to talk about on In business.

As downtowns change, as they metamorphosize from office and retail to more living, more residential, a community of people and businesses coexisting in buildings that may be underutilized.

We're going to take a look at a business that is moving back to downtown Duth and bringing a convenience store with them, a new bodega.

as more people start to congregate and live in downtown metropolitan areas across the country and certainly here in Duth as well.

Izzy Crystals, what a great place that was.

And just as a little side note, Izzy's son Lester, he was head of NBC News for a while until he went to PBS where he started and produced for many years the McNeel Lair Report.

So it all comes full circle on In business this week on PBS North.

Welcome to In Business.

I'm Ken Ber.

Tonight we're talking about downtown revitalization.

We'll look at how communities are getting people to stay in downtowns.

But first, if we want people to live downtown, they need access to things that they use every day.

We take a look at an old idea that's becoming new again, the corner grocery store.

This week on in business, we're taking a look at the transformations that's happening in downtowns across America and certainly here in Duth.

And that transition is from a business hub with offices to something completely different.

After the pandemic, not a lot of people came back to downtowns.

Businesses shrunk, a lot of vacant space that some people are saying could be turned into residential use.

And that is a need all communities have for more housing in downtowns.

It does present some problems.

One of them is if you live in a food desert or in this case a grocery store desert because you can't bring in a lot of people unless you've got what Aziz Tamine has started here in downtown Duth at the Superior Mart and that is a grocery and convenience store and that's what they're talking about with you.

Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Now, this is a brand new business called Superior Mart because you're on Superior Street.

Yeah.

Right in the heart of downtown.

How did you get this idea to open this particular If we were in New York, they call it a bodega.

Yeah.

So, for a few years now, me and my dad, we've been working the tobacco shop right across this the building right there.

And people are always asking, "Where can I get a drink?

Where can I get some milk?

It's just some medicine, anything like that."

And like since we're a smoke shop and we didn't own it or anything, that's not really something we could bring to the table.

So once the opportunity presented itself that we got a pretty good deal in this uh this banquet building, we were like, what this city needs and what we've been hearing from the community is like a small little bodega, convenience store, grocery storeesque thing.

Something to fill the void that like that people have been saying has been missing here in downtown.

In history, they would call this the corner store.

uh Duth for many years on the Skywalk level of the Holiday had Sners which was kind of uh just what you're doing here.

Uh but they closed several years ago and now this is a brand new endeavor and it's part of the revitalization plans for a downtown.

More people living, more people needing what you have.

What kind of uh merchandise do you carry?

So our plan going into this was to start with a little bit of everything.

Um we know that we want to serve the local residents here.

We know that there's a lot of uh workers that in the businesses that work around here as well and all the visitors that come in from all the hotels in the area.

So, our goal was to go into a little bit of everything.

Got a lot of drinks, a lot of packaged meals, a lot of daily necessities, a lot of groceries, medicine, just a little bit of everything to just see what the community needs.

And then hopefully as time goes on and we see the trends of what we're selling and we hear feedback from the community, we we can then start to focus up on what this what we could really start selling.

Um, so yeah, it's been a lot of fun and the learning curve these last few months.

I'm glad that we started off slower than expected.

I mean, it's been ramping up.

That way we could like learn through our mistakes and like polish everything up before it gets really crazy.

Frozen items.

You can't get those any place else downtown.

I mean, there's nobody else that has that.

Yeah.

And they are flying off the shelves.

So when we were there and the ice cream, too, has been a lot.

Ice cream has been a surprise seller.

And I'm sure it's going to get even more with the with the weather.

Yep.

that transition in your business as you get more input from your customers.

Uh what are they telling you?

Um right now everything's great.

A lot of what we started with has gone.

Um which is you know what we could we could ask for opening a new business.

So as it stands right now um drinks are our number one seller.

We have every drink you could think of.

Uh especially as the heat that's going to come in soon.

That's going to hopefully going to help with that a lot.

Um grocery also is a big help in the community.

Um, so people don't have to go down to Super One up the hill or anything like that.

They could just come get what they need real quick.

And then daily necessities, like we have a lot of um toiletries, um, a lot of cleaning supplies, household supplies um to get that across as well.

Just a little bit of everything.

And obviously this has got to be a big seller, too.

Beverages are our biggest.

Yes.

And hopefully our next big plan would probably be like a walk-in cooler.

We're going to take some remodeling, but we think that we could fit one in.

It'll be a little bit tighter, but then we can get more drinks in.

Um, and then it'll just help with like organization and stuff like that.

So, that that'd be our next big project, I think.

And your customers are telling you that they like this experience.

If there were more people living in downtown, uh, obviously that would help you.

Uh, but they need this sort of service to be able to exist downtown.

How do you feel about uh your contribution to that long-term goal?

Um, I think us being here now, um, is that is just great timing as more talk of, you know, turning more more of these buildings residential in the city.

Um, as that if that and as that does happen over time, I only see that as a good thing for our business.

Um, as there's more people here that we could serve, you know, it'll be bring more demand for us.

And then hopefully in turn when there's more people, that'll maybe even bring back some other businesses into the area.

And then that'll even just make us even busier at that point.

So I obviously I think the more people the better.

Everybody needs a snack.

Everybody needs a drink.

Um so if we could serve that um we'll be here for that and we'll be happy to do it.

I think that's a great vision for the future.

Aziz Taming is the owner of the Superior Mart on Superior Street.

It's a brand new convenience store.

It's a grocery store.

It's got home uh cleaning supplies.

It's got everything that you would need if you had an apartment in downtown Duth.

How does that make you feel that you were able to bring this to our community?

Uh really helpful.

It's just been really fun seeing everybody's reaction to the store and like everybody's really excited.

Just like even like a package sandwich here and there, some candy in between like your work break or something.

U it's just been making people really happy and then that just makes us very happy to just like be here.

You know, Damine is the owner of Superior Mart.

It's a brand new business.

It fits into the scope of what we've been talking about.

transformational housing in what was a retail and office environment in downtowns across America and certainly here in Duth.

This is in business.

Tony Hatch wrote and produced a hit record in 1964 that he described as being an invitation to escape everyday life by going downtown.

Patula Clark rode that musical bus to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

Things will be great when you're downtown.

The lights are much brighter there.

You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares.

Downtown Hatch's lyrics painted a downtown as an escape from everyday life.

In more modern times, it appeared that businesses and people wanted to escape from downtowns.

But we've since learned to come and realize that for a community to be a community, we need a healthy and vibrant downtown.

That means changing the makeup of what has traditionally been the concrete canyons of business in downtowns across the country, including here in Duth.

Reshaping and repurposing existing buildings for alternative uses such as muchneeded housing could be a part of the change.

To talk about that, we have Christy Stokes, the president and COO of downtown Duth, and Sean Flarey, the president and CEO of Bural Waters Community Foundation.

Thank you both for joining us.

Thank you.

Revitaliz revitalization of downtown is nothing new, but Duth has a new initiative that started about not even a full year ago.

And Sean, if you could start us out, how did the Imagine Duth get started and what is it?

So, it's a it's an activation plan.

The idea is that we're in this together, right?

So, it's an activation plan that people can pick up pieces of.

We've got four different work groups working on it.

And it's it's a path forward that will be going after the complexity of downtown together, right?

It's not one single solution.

It's not, oh, this is the way.

It's it's figure out together how to solve for it.

And it it started, you know, it started in conversations.

Christy and I were talking about how do you kind of move forward?

And people have joined up.

It's been good to see people leaning in, you know, and it was really after a time, you know, we were also involved with the downtown task force and a time when, you know, downtowns have changed since the pandemic and so it's like how do we look at reimagining our downtown since the pandemic and really planning out maybe five years from now.

Christie, one of the goals of Imagine Duth calls for 1,500 new housing units in the downtown core area.

We've seen some of that starting with the uh Lake View 333 down on Superior Street in the medical district.

Um, how is that changing the complexity of downtown and what is the next big development along that line?

You know, Lake View just opened their uh boutique hotel area on it.

So, they have 210 units total there and 34 of those are just more for uh extended stay or short-term for hotel and the rest are all residential.

And so that's a 15story complex that has really changed the overall skyline of our downtown and will really invigorate our downtown with more residents.

And so that's a lot of what we're talking about is how do you bring more people into the downtown?

Um, one of the phrases that's been coined is really neighborhoodification.

How do you turn the downtown into more of a neighborhood rather than that central business districts that they used to be?

you know, you have to bring more of those residents down.

And so, I think the focus now is really looking toward First Street.

And that brings up something I wanted to ask Sean about.

Uh, your foundation has partnered with DEA in a First Street revitalization.

How does that uh fit in?

Yeah.

So, we've put together, they're not large grants, they're 500 bucks a piece.

Um, but it's an idea.

Bring your idea.

It's not, oh, we have a bunch of ideas and want people to do it.

It's bring your idea and and execute it.

Uh we Mon Georgia is a place we've been to and seen them do great work at and they've done a lot of those kind of activation projects.

I want to highlight your bodega interview was so good.

Um and it it's the tension of which is first people living down here or having and it's both right but the the folks who are moving in this realm talk about roofs before retail build a place for people to be and then then the services and people start creating things to meet the needs the demand becomes there.

Yeah.

And you see more and more of that as it goes.

Yep.

Well, now that we've got the basics done, we have to talk about one of the other findings uh of concern in Imagine DUTH, and that was the safety issue, right?

Quality of life and safety.

Quality of life and safety on the list.

Uh real or perceived, uh downtowns sometimes have a bad rap about that and Duth is one of those.

It's real or perceived.

Is it real or perceived?

I would say a lot of it is the perceived.

Um, I think a lot of times one thing that we say is do you feel unsafe or is it just uncomfortable?

And so that's one thing that you have to think about is does this situation just make you feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

Certainly there are challenges in our downtown.

I'm not sugarcoating that.

But you realize when you have more people in the downtown, when there's more things going on, it certainly feels safer.

Yeah.

Sean, uh, we were in Melbourne, Australia years ago, and in Melbourne their alleys are activated.

So, if I asked you, Ken, would you walk at 11 o'clock at night in a dark alley?

You're like, no, probably not.

Um, the Melbourne alleys are alive because people are there to see the art.

And the businesses actually have to turn their doors to the alleys because that's where the customers are.

And it's still an alley.

It's still night.

It's still dark, but it's people and it's activity and it's color and it's vendors and it it's all the things.

There's not one simple solution, but it's how do you build a place where people want to be and and it's alive.

And the other thing that's really trending right now is night markets.

And so, um, I was just in Madison actually and they just had a night market and just thousands of people came out just to enjoy the evening out in the downtown.

more activities, more people, a safer feeling.

We talk about 18-hour activation where the place is alive, whether it's dog walkers in the morning and coffee or it's arts or music or 18 hours of activation is what you want on your street uh in downtown.

A couple weeks ago, we had the folks on from the Union Gospel Mission and their initiative uh for this uh four-story homeless.

How is that going to play out?

Is that going to help?

It's going to be a huge thing.

So what it's going to do is one, it's going to move the Union Gospel Mission uh closer over to government services.

So there's more of a service sector for social services.

But what we see right now is Union Gospel Mission is overcrowded.

So that's why you're seeing by factor of five.

You know, that building is designed to hold 75 and they got 300 people per meal.

And you're Yeah.

So you're seeing a lot of people out on the street and so this will be an opportunity for day space for people.

it will be uh additional housing for people.

Um 44 units versus the 22 that they have now.

So, this is going to be something that's definitely going to help our downtown and something we've advocated for um at the legislature as well.

Yeah, I'm glad that that's uh coming to fruition.

Yeah, it's good work.

Uh Christy Stokes is uh the uh president of uh the downtown what was the downtown council and is now uh downtown Duth back in the day.

Uh Sean Flurkey is president of the Boreal Foundation, which back in the day was the Dulpir Area Community Foundation.

I thank you both.

But Christie, what is your vision for downtown 5 years from now?

Oh gosh.

Um I want to see a lot of activity.

I want to see more people living there, walking their dogs.

That's one thing that we've noticed just even in our building.

There's residents above us and just to run into people walking their dogs during the lunch hour or or even in the morning is just great.

So just a lot more activity, businesses that are smaller retailers along the street as well.

Sean Christie, thank you very much for being on.

This is a great discussion.

This is great.

Before our next segment, here's a quick look at some of the business news from across the region.

Msabi Metallics has secured a $265 million deal to sell a portion of its royalty interest with the majority of the money going towards expanding its DRgrade pellet facility near Nashwalk.

The project remains on tack to become the first new tachinite plant on the iron range in about 50 years.

Msabi Metallics has also announced additional financing commitments as construction continues on its $2.5 billion project.

And Tigs Barbecue is taking over the former Castiron Bar and Grill in Pike Lake.

The food truck plans to open a new neighborhood restaurant and is now hiring for all positions.

If we want more people living downtown, we need to create places for them to call home.

Next, we look at how communities are bringing housing to their city centers.

Daniel Fanning is our guest on In Business, and we're in one of the suites here at what is now the Force on Fifth Avenue, the old Ordin.

It's been transformed into a short and soon to be hopefully in their estimation a long-term residency to bring people downtown to turn the downtown into a neighborhood and revitalize the area.

This is a vision that Mayor Roger Reinard has put forth.

It's being done across the country and this is one of the first examples of it here in Duth.

Part of the problem of course converting an office building into uh residential housing either the long-term or short-term as you're doing here at the interim is the infrastructure and the cost.

Yes, it's it's not that old of a building, but now this was built in the 70s.

So, it's starting to get those deferred maintenance costs from the elevator to the roof to HVAC.

So, a lot of that stuff was done, of course, even to turn it into a shorter term rentals to convert it to a longer term condo or apartments.

It would take even more money at a time when we kept looking at it and hoping interest rates would come down and construction cost would come down.

We've been think hearing about this for a while now.

That's not quite happening just yet.

So, for now, this was a good opportunity to get the building open, get some positive activity in here, reintroduce, particularly this end of downtown and the other end of downtown.

We're happy to see progress.

The new hospitals up and running.

We got new apartments up and running.

This ends, it's been a little bit more struggle to get this more activated with Maurica several years ago.

That was a great start.

So, it's great to partner with our friends at Mauric's and other folks on this end of downtown.

Again, this really does serve as that gateway to the downtown business community.

We want this to be a positive welcome.

We want people to stay here.

We want people to enjoy these views.

So, this has been a great way to kind of get people into Oregon and and activate this end of downtown.

Your investment in this so far and what it might take to make more long trail.

It's uh so the ownership group that owns this building now, they spent about 8 to9 million to convert it and they did it the right way.

It's, as you can tell, it's quality work.

It's quiet.

Every single room has a full kitchenet.

It's it really has a home feel to it.

So, it's it's about $8 or $9 million to do that and be several more millions to completely convert it to housing or to a condos.

At this point, it doesn't make economic sense, but we hope it will in in the near future.

As downtown Duth looks for its future and tries to find a way forward, um obviously housing and more long-term residents in the downtown would bring a new vitality around town.

Yeah.

What do you see is some of the um ancillary things that need to come to help make that happen?

What else do you need?

positive activity to first and foremost, right?

And we've heard that a lot.

We work closely with the downtown duth council and and the chamber and all of our the city partners and all of our downtown business partners.

People know they just want to see more people downtown.

Again, right, wrong or indifferent, there is that perception about downtown safety.

And while we're making some progress, we know we still have room to grow.

So, the more we can have people staying downtown, spending money downtown, walking around downtown, that kind of positive activity spurs additional investment, spurs additional economic impact.

So, that's step one.

Absolutely.

Some long-term housing is absolutely needed down here, jobs, all those things.

But we know that ultimately just getting more people downtown, changing that perception, making sure people feel safe and welcome.

It's clean, it's vibrant.

Um, we we've got work to do, but we definitely see this as a step forward.

Daniel is vice president at the Tyanium Partners.

They have the Force on Fifth Avenue, uh, short-term now, but with a long-term future in the future, right?

What is it like to run a property downtown?

What what do your guests tell you?

Yeah, it's a lot of times it's it's it depends on kind of when's the last time they've been to Duth.

So sometimes some folks haven't been to Duth because of the pandemic.

Maybe they haven't been here since the pandemic and there's still there's some nostalgia about what it used to be.

There's some even some in the more short term people maybe came during the pandemic and it wasn't as pretty as they know it could have been.

Um so it's a little bit of change in that perception to to come back, you know, revisit the Luth again.

We're open for business.

We're doing well.

There's some new cool things to see, including this building, but also another another batch of new businesses downtown.

We're all about supporting people downtown.

Titaniums have has a long history of doing commercial real estate projects downtown.

We've got three now rental units in the heart of downtown.

We we want people to come downtown to help support other local businesses, and that's a big part of our story.

One of the things that makes downtown living a doable are some of the amenities, uh, restaurants, browsers, people like that.

We've opened a new convenience store on Spir, right?

Uh how important are those things?

Yeah, they're very important.

We hear that from our guests.

They love the the proximity and the ease of just walking to Canal Park or walking across the street enjoying our local restaurants or establishments, things like that.

We can always use more of them, but I think that as we're seeing some new pop up, people are excited about that.

People want to support those local businesses and we're all about helping promote them, partnering with them, having that be a whole experience.

Yes, come in our building, let us host you, but then walk around and support other local businesses.

Check out the new restaurants, check out the new bars, check out the new small businesses in town.

And that's that's really part of that duth experience that we want people to enjoy.

Why the forest on Fifth Avenue?

Yeah.

So the forest is really it's about force and nature.

So as you as you walk around this building, you see a lot of wood.

You see kind of a lot of connection to nature.

You see a lot of obviously the lake view, but then you also see kind of the the water themes throughout the building, the wood themes throughout the building.

So we want this to really be a sense of home.

Whether you're here for one night or for one week or a couple weeks, we want you to feel at home.

We want this to be both an enjoyable, safe, and clean stay, but also just have that a home away from home feel.

And that's the kind of that force of nature theme.

And how has business been?

It's been good.

So, we're about six or seven months into it now.

Uh we kind of missed the very first summer.

We opened just after the summer.

It was about September when we opened.

So, we're we're really excited to have our first full summer under our belts.

We're already seeing bookings out through a good chunk of the summer.

Our weekends have been really really strong last several weeks.

Now, we're starting to see weekdays fill in as well.

So, we're anticipating a really good summer.

We're excited about that.

But we also see that's really good for Duth.

These are visitors who want to come up and stay at some locally owned and locally managed hotels, independent brand hotels.

People are are there's an increasing group of people that are interested in that and then they want to walk around to Canal Park.

They want to go down to the river and then the water and the lake and just to to experience Duluth in a different way.

It's pretty cool.

And uh can I get a room for Grandma's Marathon?

Unfortunately, we've been booked for quite a while, but next year I would make your reservations in advance.

Daniel Banning is the vice president of Titanium Partners.

The force on Fifth Avenue is one of their lodging facilities in downtown Duth, but it's the one that's got the future in it of being a long-term residency for people and the part of the revitalization of a downtown in Duth, Minnesota that's being mimicked across the country.

This is in business.

We started out tonight's show in front of the Stanley Center on Superior Street in downtown Duth.

I was talking about Adex men's wear.

uh Ada Custoavia and his wife Anna had a nice little men's store right on that corner.

And his claim to fame was he sold Hart Shaner and Mark suits and other high quality men's wear that wasn't finished.

You'd pick out a color and a style and then he tailored it to your body and did the stitching in the store and his wife would actually iron the clothing in the store as well.

It was a husband and wife duo.

The other thing I remember about uh that building before it was the Stanley Center in the bus depot was they had a great great little restaurant in the basement.

Their sticky buns were the best.

I'm Ken Beer.

Thank you for watching In Business.

Now, if you missed any parts of tonight's show, you can always watch it at pbsnorth.org or listen on Monday at 5:30 on the North 1033.

And if you have an idea for a future story on InBusiness, we'd love to hear from you.

Email us at askpbsnorth.org.

Thanks again for watching and until next time, let's take care of each other.